The present invention generally relates to safety monitoring and health risk alert communication devices. The present invention also relates to senior or patient care monitoring, health risk alert generation, and on-demand multimedia communication between a care requester and a caregiver. In addition, the present invention also relates to a novel onsite monitoring and communication device connected to cloud-computing resources for effective monitoring and care of a care requester. Furthermore, the present invention also relates to an emergency bell device and/or an environmental or vital sensor that can proactively identify and communicate a care requester's health or safety risks to a caregiver through the cloud-computing resources. Moreover, the present invention also relates to empowering a care requester various levels of privacy permission settings for safety monitoring and health risk alert communication between a care requester and a caregiver at a comfort level of privacy personally configured by the care requester.
Senior patient care and monitoring needs are increasingly becoming important and challenging aspects of healthcare services, especially in developed countries where the median age of the general population is rapidly shifting upward due to increased life expectancy of senior citizens. Furthermore, general social, cultural, and economic changes in family relationships are also bringing dramatic changes to senior patient care needs, as grownup children often live farther away and separately from their senior parents compared to their previous generational counterparts. In today's society, grownup children or other younger members of the family face significant challenges in accommodating and responding to urgent senior care needs in case of emergencies or accidents experienced by senior members of the family.
Moreover, regardless of one's age, a disabled patient or another care requester, who may benefit from meticulous health and safety monitoring by a caregiver, faces significant challenges in receiving appropriate levels of care and supervision, especially if the caregiver is not always physically present in the vicinity of the care requester. Even though the care requester may utilize conventional methods of communication, such as phone calls, text messages, and emails, to inform a remotely-located caregiver his or her urgent need in an event of an emergency or an accident, physical deterioration and related challenges that are prevalent among senior or disabled patients may prevent or hamper the care requester from communicating timely alert(s) to the caregiver.
Conventional devices that attempted to resolve unique challenges faced by seniors and disabled patients include a “baby monitoring” device, which functions as a closed-circuit security camera that transmits video and/or audio feeds from the location of the baby monitoring device to a destination electronic device, such as a PC, a notebook computer, or a smart phone. However, as the name “baby monitoring” device suggests, such security camera devices are merely capable of passively transmitting video and/or audio feeds captured from their fields of view from camera lenses, and do not empower a care requester from actively communicating with the caregiver.
Other conventional senior care devices include an emergency bell button device and a wearable electronic device that allow a care requester to reach an emergency call center when an emergency button is triggered. However, these conventional devices fail to empower the care requester from describing or showing what a particular risk or an urgent care need that the care requester is experiencing at the moment of the emergency button press, if the care requester is unable to speak or verbalize his or her emergency needs.
Furthermore, conventional baby monitor-style security camera devices introduce additional challenges in privacy violations in everyday life of a care requester, especially if the care requester is an adult who is not cognitively impaired and is not under legal guardianship of another individual. For example, a senior citizen (i.e. an adult care requester) may feel uncomfortable in placing a baby monitoring device in a bedroom due to privacy issues. Even if the caregiver was the senior citizen's grownup child who agreed to monitor his or her parent through the baby monitor for the parent's likely medical need in the near future, the senior citizen, who is not cognitively impaired, may desire certain assurances of privacy, depending on the time of the day or specific situations that require privacy.
Therefore, it may be desirable to devise a novel patient care electronic system that provides privacy level-adjustable onsite monitoring as well as two-way communication capabilities between a care requester and a care giver. Moreover, it may also be desirable to devise a novel patient care electronic system that incorporates a dedicated onsite monitoring device that provides dual functionalities of privacy level-adjustable patient security monitoring and on-demand webcam conferencing.
In addition, it may also be desirable to devise a novel patient care electronic system that also incorporates one or more emergency bell devices, patient vital sensors, environmental sensors, and patient-wearable devices that enable the novel patient care electronic system to produce autonomous machine-generated decisions in creating patient endangerment alerts to electronic devices accessed by caregivers for efficient and timely patient care management. Furthermore, it may also be desirable to devise a method of operating a novel privacy-controlled patient care electronic system that provides remote yet timely and proactive monitoring of care requesters who may encounter sudden health or safety endangerments.